n her.

"Hush!" murmured Constantia in a hollow tone; "hush!" she repeated.

"Merciful Heaven! what is it?" inquired Frances, terrified at her
earnestness.

"Hush!" again said Constantia: adding, "Do you not hear?"

"Hear? I hear nothing but the tolling of the midnight bell--'Tis twelve
o'clock."

"It is," said Constantia, in a voice trembling with intense suffering;
"it is twelve o'clock---- My wedding-day is indeed come!"

CHAPTER VIII.

When all the riches of the globe beside
Flow'd in to thee with every tide;
When all that nature did thy soil deny,
The growth was of thy fruitful industry;
When all the proud and dreadful sea,
And all his tributary streams,
A constant tribute paid to thee,
Extended Thames.

COWLEY.

The country through which Robin travelled on his journey to London
presented an aspect very different from that which it now assumes.
Blackheath was noted for highwaymen; and there was a fair and reasonable
chance of being robbed and murdered between Greenwich and London. The
Ranger never paused from the time he set out until he found himself
under a portion of the long brick-wall that still divides the richly
ornamented park from the arid and unfertilised heath. He sat down
beneath its shadow, and regaled himself with a morsel of ship-biscuit
and a mouthful of brandy; then undid the fastening of his wallet, and
selected from amid its contents a neatly and skilfully made hump, which,
having previously removed his coat, he dexterously transferred to his
shoulder, and then donned a jacket into which the hump fitted with
extraordinary exactness. He next drew from his bosom a small hand-glass,
and painted and dyed his face with different preparations, so that even
Barbara would have failed to recognise her friend and admirer. Having
placed a patch over one eye, and stuck a chin-tuft of black hair under
his lip, he seemed satisfied with his appearance, replaced the glass and
sundry other things in his sack, then, with his usual agility, mounted
one of the overhanging trees, and concealed it amid the branches. As he
resumed his journey, he might have been taken for a gipsy minstrel, for
suspended round his neck was a small cracked gittern, retaining only two
strings. This, as if in mockery of his assumed misfortune, he had rested
on the hump, while the riband, which was of bright scarlet, encircled,
like a necklace, his swarthy neck, t